Ansible 2.5

    Core and Curated Module Freeze: 22 January 2018

    Release Candidate 1 will be 21 February, 2018

    Service Release schedule: every 2-3 weeks

    Engine improvements

    • Assemble module improvements- assemble just skips when in check mode, it should be able to test if there is a difference and changed=true/false.- The same with diff, it should work as template modules does
    • Handle Password reset prompts cleaner
    • Tasks stats for rescues and ignores
    • Normalize temp dir usage across all subsystems
    • Add option to set playbook dir for adhoc, inventory and console to allow for ‘relative path loading’

    Ansible-Config

    • Extend config to more plugin types and update plugins to support the new config

    Inventory

    • ansible-inventory option to output group variable assignment and data (–export)
    • Create inventory plugins for:- aws

    Facts

    • Namespacing fact variables (via a config option) implemented in ansible/ansible PR .Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #17.
    • Make fact collectors and gather_subset specs finer grained
    • Eliminate unneeded deps between fact collectors
    • A simpler altenative to , only takes a list
    • Remove complexity from loops, lookups are still available to users
    • Less confusing having a static directive vs a one that is dynamic depending on plugins loaded.

    Vault

    • Vault secrets client inc new ‘keyring’ client

    Runtime Check on Modules for Blacklisting

    • Filter on things like “supported_by” in module metadata
    • Provide users with an option of “warning, error or allow/ignore”
    • Configurable via ansible.cfg and environment variable

    Windows

    • Implement gather_subset on Windows facts
    • Fix Windows async + become to allow them to work together
    • Implement Windows become flags for controlling various modes (done)- logontype- elevation behavior
    • Convert win_updates to action plugin for auto reboot and extra features (done)
    • Spike out changing the connection over to PSRP instead of WSMV (done- it’s possible)
    • Module updates
      • win_updates (done)
        • Fix win_updates to detect (or request) become
        • Add whitelist/blacklist features to win_updates
      • win_dsc further improvements (done)

    General Cloud

    • Make multi-cloud provisioning easier
    • Diff mode will output provisioning task results of ansible-playbook runs
    • Terraform module
    • Focus on pull requests for various modules
    • Triage existing merges for modules
    • Module work
      • ec2_instance
      • ec2_vpc: Allow the addition of secondary IPv4 CIDRS to existing VPCs.
      • AWS Network Load Balancer support (NLB module, ASG support, etc)

    Azure

    • Azure CLI auth (done)
    • Fix Azure module results to have “high-level” output instead of raw REST API dictionary (partial, more to come in 2.6)
    • Deprecate Azure automatic storage accounts in azure_rm_virtualmachine (breaks on Azure Stack, punted until AS supports managed disks)

    Network Roadmap

    • Refactor common network shared code into package (done)
    • Convert various nxos modules to leverage declarative intent (done)
    • Refactor various modules to leverage the cliconf plugin (done)
    • Add various missing declarative modules for supported platforms and functions (done)
    • Implement a feature that handles platform differences and feature unavailability (done)
    • netconf-config.py should provide control for deployment strategy
    • Create netconf connection plugin (done)
    • Create netconf fact module
    • Turn network_cli into a usable connection type (done)
    • Implements jsonrpc message passing for ansible-connection (done)
    • Improve logging for ansible-connection (done)
    • Improve stdout output for failures whilst using persistent connection (done)
    • Create IOS-XR NetConf Plugin and refactor iosxr modules to leverage netconf plugin (done)
    • Refactor junos modules to use netconf plugin (done)
    • Filters: Add a filter to convert XML response from a network device to JSON object (done)

    Documentation

    • Extend documentation to more plugins
    • Document vault-password-client scripts.
    • Network Documentation
      • New landing page (to replace intro_networking) (done)
      • Platform specific guides (done)
      • Walk through: Getting Started (done)
      • Networking and (done)
      • Best practice (done)

    Contributor Quality of Life

    • Resolve issues requiring skipping of some integration tests on Python 3.